Diversifying Businesses to Change Life: The story of Anipha

Anipha joined the SET project funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) through the Embassy of Switzerland in Tanzania through attending the training conducted by MVIWAMORO on food processing.

"After the training, we started working together in our saving and business group, making crisps and yoghurt. We decided to work in shifts to manage our other duties at home. We still meet weekly to collect our savings and sometimes work on crisps or yoghurt making when we see market demand.”

Anipha, who received a loan from her saving group, is currently balancing multiple businesses, including selling fried fish, doughnuts, soup, banana crisps, and yogurt. "The entrepreneurship training helped me gain self-confidence and clarity about what I should do. I liked the practical approach, the learning-by-doing, and the support we received with the start-up equipment."

Currently, Anipha's business activities generate an income of about 300,000 TSh per month. With her earnings, she now pays her daughter's nursery school fees.

Despite not achieving the grades to continue to college, Anipha tells us she wanted to become a lawyer. She highlights the importance of changing mindsets in her community, where men often feel solely responsible for providing for the family. "Gender training is very important and missing in our community. Sometimes there is gender violence due to the shame of reporting your own man and community pressure. This needs to be reported, and we need more training on gender issues. Men should also attend these training sessions to understand the balance needed in the family. Men are still dominant here, so we need a bigger voice in decision making." she concludes.

For the future, she plans to focus more on fish due to its steady demand and hopes to expand by opening a small shop to sell various foods. " Many young women in our community prefer starting a business over working in agriculture but lack the knowledge and start-up capital. Thus, we women would benefit from more training on business skills, especially courses on various skills would are great for diversification", she adds.